Handbook of Information Security Management
(Publisher: CRC Press LLC)
Author(s): Hal Tipton and Micki Krause, Consulting Editors
ISBN: 0849399475
Publication Date: 01/01/98

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APPROPRIATE USE POLICY

It is important to communicate management’s expectation for employee’s use of these new technologies. An effective way to do that is to supplement the corporate policies and procedures with a more user-friendly bulletined list of requirements. The list should be specific, highlight employee expectations and outline what employees can and cannot do on the Internet, intranet, and WWW. The goal is to communicate with each and every employee, leaving little room for doubt or confusion. An Appropriate Use Policy (Exhibit 2) could achieve these goals and reinforce the higher level. Areas to address include the proper use of employee time, corporate computing and networking resources, and acceptable material to be viewed or downloaded to company resources.

Exhibit 2. Appropriate Use Policy

Most companies are concerned with the Telecommunications Act and their liabilities in terms of allowing employees to use the Internet on company time and with company resources. Most find that the trade-off is highly skewed to the benefit of the corporation in support of the utility of the Internet. Guidelines must be carefully spelled out and coordinated with the legal department to ensure that company liabilities are addressed through clear specification of roles and responsibilities. Most companies do not monitor their employee’s use of the Internet or the intranet, but find that audit trail information is critical to prosecution and defense for computer crime.

Overall computer security policies and procedures are the baseline for any security architecture and the first thing to do when implementing any new technology. However, you are never really finished as the development and support of security policies is an iterative process and should be revisited on an ongoing basis to ensure that they are up-to-date, accommodate new technologies, address current risk levels, and reflect the company’s use of information and network and computing resources.

There are four basic threats to consider when you begin to use Internet, intranet, and Web technologies:

  • Unauthorized alteration of data
  • Unauthorized access to the underlying operating system
  • Eavesdropping on messages passed between a server and a browser
  • Impersonation

Your security strategies should address all four. These threats are common to any technology in terms of protecting information. In the remainder of this chapter, we will build upon the general “good security practices and traditional security management” discussed in the first section and apply these lessons to the technical implementation of security and control mechanisms in the Internet, intranet, and Web environments.

The profile of a computer hacker is changing with the exploitation of Internet and Web technologies. Computerized bulletin board services and network chat groups link computer hackers (formerly characterized as loners and misfits) together. Hacker techniques, programs and utilities, and easy-to-follow instructions are readily available on the net. This enables hackers to more quickly assemble the tools to steal information and break into computers and networks, and it also provides the “would-be” hacker a readily available arsenal of tools.

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